


Life Among Trees

by Kingsonne



Series: Loose Pages of Flourish and Blotts: One-shots and Prompt Responses [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Female Harry Potter, Ficlet, Gen, Non-Human Harry Potter, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-20 07:41:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30001542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kingsonne/pseuds/Kingsonne
Summary: Willow Potter has always been different. When she gets to Hogwarts she finds out the secret of why.
Series: Loose Pages of Flourish and Blotts: One-shots and Prompt Responses [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2206326
Kudos: 12





	Life Among Trees

Willow Potter crept quietly through the halls of Hogwarts, the sound of her slippered feet like the scraping of fallen leaves across a courtyard. With her father's invisibility cloak wrapped around her she searched for the thing that would fill the aching emptiness in her chest. When she was younger she thought it to be the mourning she felt for her parents. A longing pull on her heart that only dulled when she tended the Dursley's garden or walked barefoot through the park.

Now though she knew it was something more. She had felt it grow stronger with every mile that fell behind the Hogwarts Express, and she felt it like an itch under her skin every minute she spent in the castle. The first few months in the magical world hadn't brought her any closer to finding it. Between classes, new friends, and the ever present patrols of teachers and prefects she just hadn't had the time.

The yearning grew stronger as hallways, doors, stairways, arches and passages fell behind her, twists and turns taking her deeper into the castle.

She stepped through one last archway and into an open courtyard. Pools of bright moonlight illuminated ancient walls, stonework so weathered that the enclosure seemed more hewn out of natural rock than assembled by human hands. Vines crawled high along those walls, piles of rubble at their bases a testament to the transformative power of nature. Grasses and flowers grew thick amidst the lines of the cobbled floor, blooming and surviving despite the winter chill.

It was the tree in the center of the courtyard that caught her attention though. A withered and dead tree, its bare wood pale in the moonlight. A tragic centerpiece to the explosion of life all around it. It was a young tree too, Willow noticed as she circled around it, something that made its death even more tragic.

She removed her slippers and stepped lightly through a ring of lilies towards the tree when something caught her attention.

There, among the dry and drooping branches of the tree was a young sapling, growing upward as if cradled in the arms of the dead tree, and there in the bark of the sapling she saw it, a jagged scar, sealed with healing sap, in the shape of a lightning bolt.

Willow knelt down and placed her hand on the sapling, reaching out to the heart of the plant the way she had been able to do for as long as she could remember. There it was, the pulse of life, the breathing of the leaves, the searching of the roots, the pulsing of water and sap through the wood. A pulsing that perfectly matched the beating of her heart.

As she sat there connected with the sapling, Willow felt the aching emptiness in her being healing. She was whole again. As her soul and magic knit together once again, a secret came with them, hidden in the wood and leaves of her other body, and Willow Potter the Dryad stood. She gently rested her hand on the cold wood of the dead tree and bowed her head.

"Thank you mum."


End file.
